The purpose of this poll is not texactly to decide "who is the best" pianist of all time so to speak, I just wanted to know who is people's favorite, that's all. The poll list allows only 10 choices, so many good pianists were not included in it. I can name many excellent performers besides these ten: for example James P. Johnson, Eubie Blake, Jelly Roll Morton, William Albrigt, John Gill, Trebor Tichenor, Glenn Jenks and many more. Not all of them are strictly ragtime pianists, but they are not far from ragtime anyway. Other pianists from the Golden Era of ragtime left very few live quality recordings, so it's impossible to judge them. That's why I haven't included names like Scott Joplin, James Scott and Louis Chauvin. We don't know very much about their playing styles, although I'm sure that several of them were very good pianists too.

Judging a pianist strictly by his technical skills is not always a guarantee that this pianist would be the most popular one. There are several ragtime piano players whose performances aren't flawless, but who have a great charisma and who are 100% genuine entertainers. I won't name any names here, but sure you understand what I mean by that.

What would your own suggestions be? Whom would you like to include (or exclude) in that list and why? Do you have any favorite piano pianist yourself?